


Hurry up and wait

by taizi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: M/M, kitanishi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 04:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10678029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: Kitamoto, and every tiny unacknowledged thing about him, all the little facets of his character that no one else would notice missing if they were gone—all of those things are the most familiar things to Satoru in the entire world. He knows it, Kitamoto knows it.





	Hurry up and wait

It starts with an invitation.

One of Satoru’s classmates at cram school invites him to go out with her and a few of her friends over the coming weekend—and since some of them would have dates with them, he’s more than welcome to bring his girlfriend along!

The problem:

Satoru doesn’t have a girlfriend. Satoru is  _terminally single._

He could cancel, but he  _wants_  to go. He could show up alone, but that would be all kinds of awkward—especially if he was the odd man out,  _especially_ if they were expecting him to have a date.

So he puts his brilliant mind to work in coming up with a solution.

 

* * *

 

“Natsumeee, what do I  _do?_ ” Satoru is sprawled piteously across Natsume’s desk. “I need your advice, man.”

“Go by yourself?”

“Natsume! I need  _better_ advice!”

Natsume eyes the book he was reading, trapped under Satoru’s arms, and visibly gives up on the idea of extracting it before the idea can even half form in his eyes. Instead he sighs and leans back in his chair, accepting Satoru’s dilemma as his own. They’ve come a long way as friends.

“Honestly, Nishimura, why ask me?” the heartthrob of year two asks obliviously, pushing dusty blond hair out of his eyes. “I have literally  _no experience_  when it comes to this. I’ve never been on a date.”

Satoru narrows his eyes at him. Somehow it’s even  _more_ annoying that Natsume is so sincerely clueless about how stupidly popular he is. Satoru has no idea how to verbalize this, so he settles for glaring quietly.

“Besides,” Natsume adds, unmoved by Satoru’s expression, “I figured you’d just go with Kitamoto.”

Satoru sits up slowly, staring. “Uh. Why would I go with Kitamoto?”

Natsume looks uncertainly back at him. “Because you’re dating him?”

“What.”

There’s an impasse of stark misunderstanding opening between them like a yawning chasm, and Natsume  _visibly_  retreats back into his little socially awkward shell like some kind of giant skittish hermit crab. Satoru watches him go, totally bemused.

His face is red, hands tangled anxiously together in his lap, eye contact a thing of the past.

“I just assumed—I’m so sorry—”

“Dude, it’s okay, I just—have no idea where that came from?”

“I’m really,  _really_  sorry—”

“Natsume, seriously. Stop apologizing or Tsuji’s gonna think I’m bullying you—oh, great, here he comes now.”

Satoru leans back in his chair when Tsuji stops by the desk, and watches Natsume’s face as the pale boy hurriedly assures their class rep that all’s well. Natsume was  _wrong,_ obviously, but it’s not like Satoru's  _mad_ about it. Natsume doesn’t have much experience in being sociable or having friends (which is an ugly thought, and Satoru hates that it’s true) so it makes sense that he sort of read the cues wrong. It’s no big deal, not even worth thinking about.

But he’s thinking about it. Tuning out the conversation going on right beside him and staring without seeing out the window.

Thinking about  _what_ cues Natsume read, and how he possibly could have read them wrong.

“You’re not wrong,” Tsuji is saying calmly, in stark defiance of Satoru’s innermost thoughts. He tunes back into the conversation sharply, watching Tsuji pat Natsume’s shoulder comfortingly. “You picked up on the same cues everyone else did.”

Wait, what?

“Wait, what?” Satoru sits up straight, more than a little gobsmacked, and stares at Tsuji, who stares right back. Natsume is a shade of pink Satoru has never seen on him before, but it doesn’t look like he’s about to die of humiliation or try to crawl under a rock or something. Compared to the Natsume they started with, this is progress.

“Nishimura, come on," Tsuji says. "It’s obvious.”

Outraged, Satoru squawks, “No it’s not! What are we even talking about!”

Tsuji gives him literally the dryest look ever. Honestly, Satoru has seen his own  _mother_  look more enthusiastic than Tsuji does right now. He’d be impressed, if he wasn’t so busy being offended. 

“You, my friend,” Tsuji says kindly, even leaning over to put a caring hand on Satoru’s arm, “are an idiot.”

 

* * *

 

“Sorry for intruding!” Satoru says cheerfully as he steps into Kitamoto’s little apartment. Kitamoto’s mom is at work, but his dad and little sister greet him warmly from the living area as he follows his friend to his bedroom. “Hey, you’re sure it’s cool if I stay for dinner?”

“'Course I am,” Kitamoto replies easily, setting his bag down. “You know you’re welcome whenever. My parents pretty much consider you one of theirs.”

It warms Satoru up from the bottom of his heart to the top, and he beams widely as he sinks onto Kitamoto’s bed. For all that his own family hardly has time for him, he’s never felt unwanted here. 

“So what’d you wanna talk about?” Kitamoto asks, climbing onto the bed beside him. Satoru can think of probably a hundred other times they’ve sat just like this, in the comfortable dim of the fading daylight as it reaches through the bedroom window. “And does it have anything to do with why Natsume couldn’t look me in the eye after school?”

“Oh, jeez, I told him it was  _fine_.” Rolling his eyes, Satoru settles into storytelling mode. “I told him about how I needed a date for this weekend, and  _he_  told  _me_  that he thought  _you’d_  be my date.”

Kitamoto goes still. His expression doesn’t change, not really, but his smile is a little fixed. And maybe it’s the weird lighting in his room, but Satoru suddenly doesn’t recognize the look in his eyes.

“Oh yeah?” his friend says, sounding completely normal. “Where’d he get  _that_ idea?”

Satoru blinks at him. There’s no way to brush the weirdness off, pretend he didn’t see it _._ Kitamoto, and every tiny unacknowledged thing about him, all the little facets of his character that no one else would notice missing if they were gone—all of those things are the most familiar things to Satoru in the entire world. He knows it, Kitamoto knows it.

The forced smile fades. Kitamoto looks away, facing the rest of the room, and rubs a hand through his short hair.

They’re close enough that their shoulders bump, that they’d be nose to nose if they turned towards each other. Instead they sit quietly, side by side. Like two parallel lines, always on the same page, always in perfect tandem, and somehow,  _somehow,_ never meeting in the middle.

Satoru’s heart is beating a little harder. He faces the room, too.

He celebrated his thirteenth birthday right here.

Kitamoto’s mom made a cake, and Kitamoto and Mana both helped. It was lopsided and the frosting was grainy with a little too much sugar and the strawberries mysteriously disappeared before they could have anything to do with the decoration, and to this day Satoru would swear in front of god and everybody that it was the best birthday cake in the world. He and Kitamoto took their slices back to his bedroom and ate them right where they’re sitting right now, cross-legged on the bed and grinning with their mouths full and being generally loud and teenage boy and stupid, and Satoru felt so full and so loved that he didn’t want to go home that night.

He  _never_ wants to go home from here. Not even now, when something uncomfortable fills the familiar air between them for the first time that Satoru can remember. But—

“Maybe you shouldn’t stay for dinner,” Kitamoto offers, in a small voice. It sounds like an out, but Satoru can’t tell who for, and he’s stunned by it either way.

“You want me to leave?”

The silence that eats up the seconds after that is bleak and disarming, and he’s frozen in some terrible combination of shock and hurt and shame. He wants, for a moment, to ask what he did wrong. The moment comes and goes before he can work up the nerve, so he doesn’t ask.

Moving mechanically, Satoru stands up and stoops to pick his bag off the floor without another word, heading towards the door. Kitamoto catches his eye as he closes it behind him, and something awful happens to his face the second he sees whatever Satoru’s face looks like.

“Oh, wait. Satchan,  _wait_.”

He doesn’t wait.

He hears Mana’s alarmed “Satoru-nii? What happened?” as he grabs his shoes and all but falls out the front door, but he doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t even stop to pull his sneakers on. Just takes the stairs three at at time and sprints down the street, because he’s about three, maybe four seconds away from totally dissolving into stupid tears, and he needs to get gone before that happens.

 

* * *

 

Touko looks ready to cry at the sight of him. She takes the awkward bundle of jacket, shoes, and bookbag out of his arms, and hurries to get him house slippers while he waits in the genkan, calling up the stairs for Natsume as she goes.

He tries to apologize precisely one time for showing up so abruptly this late in the evening, and Touko hushes him soundly.

“You’re welcome anytime,” she says, tone firm, and Satoru swallows a lump in throat.

Thumping footsteps on the stairs announce Natsume, and Tanuma right behind him. Natsume’s eyes are bright with worry already and he reaches out to Satoru as carefully as he always does, testing the waters inch by inch. He’s so much like Touko that she could have raised him herself, the way he’s so thoughtful and earnest in everything he does, and Satoru saves that thought to smile at later.

For now he blurts, “Don’t look at me like that unless you want me to start bawling, okay, I  _swear._ ”

Tanuma follows Touko into the kitchen to make tea. Natsume takes Satoru’s hand to lead him upstairs, even though he’s been here a million times and knows the way just fine. 

But he takes Natsume’s hand when it’s offered, and allows himself to be drawn inside. In Natsume’s room, with a fat cat purring in his lap and Tanuma’s hoodie forced over his head, Satoru squares his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and says, “It was obvious to everybody but _me_.”

It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for Natsume to parse that statement and find the meaning behind it. His eyes widen and then go soft, all liquid sympathy and understanding and fondness.

Which turns out to be all it takes for Satoru to finally crumple, and he does; burying his face in his hands and giving into loud, ugly tears. 

He doesn’t know how to be stoic and level-headed and calm, like Tanuma and Taki and Kitamoto. He doesn’t how to make this hurt  _lesser._

“Tsuji was right,” he sobs, rubbing his eyes with the trailing ends of Tanuma’s sleeves. “It was so obvious, and everybody knew before me, and I hurt Kitamoto, ‘cause I’m an _idiot._ ”

Natsume moves closer, and puts an arm around his shoulders. He isn’t one to initiate contact, not really, and all the hugs Satoru’s ever got from him have been on his own terms. But Natsume holds him tight, and presses his cheek against Satoru’s hair.

“Tsuji didn’t mean it,” he says gently. “You know that. And whatever happened with Kitamoto—it’s fixable, I promise.”

“But how do you _know?_ You don’t even know what happened. For all you know, I ruined everything, forever.”

Natsume hesitates to answer right away, because for all his earnest and caring he’s still brand new at this; then the bedroom door slides open and the answer comes in the form of Tanuma, stepping through quietly with a tray of teacups.  

“You have company,” he says vaguely, which is an odd thing to say—Natsume knows he has company, _Satoru_ is his company and he’s sitting right here?

And then at the same time Satoru realizes Tanuma was talking to _him,_ Kitamoto staggers into the room right behind him.

Satoru freezes. Natsume exhales softly, and draws away; lingering long enough to take Nyanko-sensei out of Satoru’s lap, he offers Satoru a warm smile and moves to join Tanuma beside his desk on the other side of the small room. Satoru feels distinctly abandoned, even though they’re hardly more than an arm’s length away. And it’s not like they left him to fend off a bear. Just his wheezing best friend, whose doubled over with his hands braced on his knees, like he sprinted twice the length of town in the last twenty minutes.

“Went to your house first,” Kitamoto pants. “That was stupid.”

“Well, yeah,” Satoru says.

Kitamoto straightens when he’s more or less caught his breath, and for a moment that something awful flits through his expression again when he looks across the room at Satoru, the same way it did before. And sure, Satoru probably looks pretty pathetic, since he just got done crying like a four year old and his eyes are puffy and gross and he’s in a hoodie two sizes too big, but that doesn’t mean Kitamoto has to _look_ at him like that.

Then that painful expression shifts into pure, stark irritation, and he jabs an accusing finger at Satoru in a way Satoru is entirely unprepared for.

“Why the hell did you run off like that?” Kitamoto snaps. Natsume and Tanuma are watching the exchange with wide eyes. “Dad thought we had a fight and lectured me for five mintues about how I should treat my friends.”

Affronted, Satoru surges to his feet. “What do you—you kicked me out!”

“Um, I seem to recall giving you an _option_ of staying or going,” Kitamoto bites out furiously. He seems more frustrated than truly angry, and more frustrated at himself than Satoru, but it’s all coming out in a fuming tirade. “As if I’d ever kick you out, come _on._ ”

“Okay, listen, when your choices are A: Something you obviously want, and B: Something you obviously don’t, it’s _not_ a choice, it’s a _trap_.” Satoru can feel his eyes burning again just remembering that alien feeling of unwelcome, and he ignores them; doing his best to glower as forcefully as Taki when she catches him stealing out of Natsume’s lunch. “So when I _obviously_ want to stay, but you tell me I should _go,_ I’m supposed to, what? Read between the lines?”

Kitamoto throws his hands up. “ _Yes!”_

“That was a rhetorical question! You know I can’t do that!”

They glare at each other some more. There’s maybe four feet between them. Distantly, Satoru is aware of Natsume all but dragging Tanuma out of the room. 

Kitamoto says, “Come here.” 

Satoru crosses his arms, to better pretend his hands aren’t shaking. “No. _You_ come here.”

In two quick strides, he does.

 

* * *

 

It’s kind of weird, standing there in Natsume’s bedroom, in Tanuma’s hoodie, kissing Kitamoto, who he had never imagined kissing before today. 

It stops being weird somewhere between the third and fourth gentle press of his best friend’s mouth against his own. And whatever Satoru _had_ imagined before, in lieu of this, absolutely pales in comparison.

 

* * *

 

“So,” Satoru says lamely, swinging their joined hands a bit as they walk, “Some friends invited me out this weekend. Said I could bring a date. Wanna come with?”

Kitamoto gives him a dry look. Satoru offers his most winning smile. 

“I should say no,” Kitamoto says, deadpan, “just to make sure you learn something from all this.”

“Acchan!” Satoru squawks. “Dude, come _on!_ As my boyfriend, you’re like, _obligated_ to do all the date stuff with me so I don’t have to do it alone! That’s one of the perks!”

They bicker most of the way back to Kitamoto’s house, but his hand is warm where it’s wrapped around Satoru’s. And his smile is even warmer, somehow, each time he pauses to lean down and kiss the indignation off Satoru’s face. 


End file.
